Stocks, Sure, but Trading Places Can Be Enriching, Too

I’m spending the Christmas holiday in a three-bedroom tropical mountain farmhouse in Costa Rica. Or, on second thought, maybe I’ll take the luxury apartment in the heart of Rome. Or, no, I’ve got it — I’ll stay in the restored Dutch home on a canal in Amsterdam.

I am looking at last-minute listings on www.digsville.com, one of the many home-exchange Web sites where people offer to swap their houses to spend their winter vacation in the United States.

All right, none of them specifically asked for Larchmont, N.Y. (charming three-bedroom house in leafy suburb, just 35-minute train ride from New York City). The owners of those listings in Costa Rica, Rome and Amsterdam were searching for places in Manhattan, Miami, Maui or Los Angeles.

But being in the suburbs does not rule me out of playing the home-exchange game.

“We had one in Malaysia that wanted to go to Scranton,” said Joshua Jaffe, president of Intervac United States (www.intervac.com), one of the oldest home-swapping organizations and one that specializes in international trades.

It was last year at this time that I really tuned into the house-exchange idea. My brother-in-law and sister-in-law, along with their two children, traded their lovely 4,500-square-foot Cape Cod house in Santa Barbara, Calif., for a 2,500-square-foot modern loft space in lower Midtown Manhattan during the week of Christmas and New Year.

My sister-in-law, Jan, said she was not even contemplating trading houses, but was perusing www.craigslist.org, looking for bicycles. The heading “house swaps” intrigued her, and she found a family of four from New York interested in coming to Santa Barbara for the holidays.

“I e-mailed him and described our house,” she said. “He sent pictures and I sent pictures. I was a little nervous — who knows if the pictures he’s sending are really his house?”

The deal was sealed, however, and they sent off keys to each other.

“In September I didn’t know them, and in December I was living in their house,” Jan said. “But it turned out fabulous.”

To Mr. Jaffe, “it’s baffling that so few people do home exchanges,” he said. “Hundreds of millions of people travel and only tens of thousands of people do home swapping.”

There are two major obstacles, he said. One is the bed issue.

Or as my friend Nancy put it: “I’d be happy to sleep in someone else’s house. It’s different having someone sleeping in your bed.”

Since Jan rented out their home in the past, she is over the slightly squeamish thought of a stranger snuggling up in her sheets.

And as far as staying in someone else’s boudoir, “When you go to a hotel, who knows who’s been sleeping in that bed?” she said.

The other worry, of course, is that you may end up with a nut who steals your silver, burns down the kitchen, or throws all-night keg parties.

Overwhelmingly, though, home-exchange organizations say that negative experiences are rare, even when you consider that people often throw in bicycles or cars as part of the deal.

“By the time you make the exchanges, generally the people are not strangers,” Mr. Jaffe said, because you have been sending e-mail messages and perhaps phoning each other a number of times.

House exchanges started in an organized fashion in the 1950s with academics looking to switch houses as a cheap way to travel or for sabbatical leaves.

Photo

Credit
Dave Ember

From then until the advent of the widespread use of the Internet in the late 1990s, exchanges were done by leafing through catalogs filled with descriptions of the houses alongside a postage-size photo. Intervac still does a small business in catalogs.

On Intervac, which has 20,000 members in the database, half of them active, he said, you can view listings free, but have to be a member to contact anyone. The same is true for Home Exchange (www.homeexchange.com), with 18,500 members. It charges $99.95 annually, and if you do not find a swap, the second year is free.

On other sites, like www.digsville.com ($44.95 for the year) or International Home Exchange (www.ihen.com and $39.95 annual membership), you pay to list your home, but can contact people free.

Helen Bergstein, founder and president of Digsville, said her organization had 2,500 paid members and 11,000 guest members.

Although home exchangers stress the positive aspects, Mr. Jaffe said that in the many years his company had been around, there had been some problems.

“Occasionally you just have jerks,” he said. “Someone who will drive your car from New York to Florida without permission. Someone who calls home to France without using a calling card. A kid drops food on the upholstery and they don’t clean up.”

Although home-exchange companies say your home insurance and car insurance should cover any exchanges, Jeanne M. Salvatore, a spokeswoman with the Insurance Information Institute, urged anyone considering the option to call their insurance company to find out if extra coverage is necessary.

“Make sure you have enough liability if anyone gets hurt,” she said.

Ms. Bergstein said the community created by her Web site — a forum, a monthly newsletter and repeat customers — ensures that any bad apples are quickly discovered.

“A couple of years ago, someone from Italy said, ‘You can have our house,’ and then at the last minute it was not available, but you can rent the house next door,” she said. After a few incidents like that, “they were off the site.”

The most common problem is with what Ms. Bergstein called “housekeeping styles.” To make sure, as she says, “we keep Oscar and Felix apart,” her Web site now has a place where you can note your degree of tidiness by checking, “You can eat off the floor,” “Don’t even think about eating off the floor,” or “Company is coming, better clean.”

If you are lucky, you will end up swapping with someone like Martine Poulin, who lives outside of Quebec City and has enjoyed numerous successful exchanges in Canada and Europe.

“We leave things people can read about the area,” she said. “We also leave flowers and a bottle of wine.”

She is currently looking for a last-minute exchange in New York City over the holidays.

Did I mention we are just a short train ride away?

E-mail: shortcuts@nytimes.com

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page B5 of the National edition with the headline: Stocks, Sure, but Trading Places Can Be Enriching, Too. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe